


love your sight and sound

by blanchtt



Series: listen to the girl as she takes on half the world [2]
Category: Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-21 21:51:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16584866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanchtt/pseuds/blanchtt
Summary: She takes her amp and meets up with itsyagirlconstance69 from CraigsList and Constance’s proposition is shady—can you do twenty-five bucks instead, and we’re looking for a lead by the way wanna come to our practice?—but shady is fun and she hasn’t been doing much else lately, so Debbie says yes.





	love your sight and sound

**Author's Note:**

> Follow up to [Just Like Honey](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15630090).

 

 

 

 

 

 

She takes her amp and meets up with itsyagirlconstance69 from CraigsList and Constance’s proposition is shady— _can you do twenty-five bucks instead, and we’re looking for a lead by the way wanna come to our practice?_ —but shady is fun and she hasn’t been doing much else lately, so Debbie says yes.

 

And it’s not surprising how much fun she has with all of them, jamming out in a kick-ass apartment with three other women who know what they’re doing. It’s the first time she’s picked up her guitar and played in public since Danny’s death, and as soon as she plugs her guitar into her amp that first day, slides the strap over her head and onto her shoulder, lets the weight of it hang there as she rests her right hand on the steel strings, she wonders how she’s stayed away from it so long when it feels so right.

 

(It’s the strap from Danny’s guitar, old and worn-in but still solid, slim and supple and the leather a dark, creamy coffee color.)

 

When they finish and she packs up it’s Nine Ball who sidles up to her, slow and easy, once Constance has left and Lou is over in her kitchen doing something, water running and rinsing out the bottles of beer they’ve put away.

 

“You gon’ come back on Thursday?” Nine Ball asks, expression measured but corner of her lip tilted up like she already knows the answer, and Debbie smiles back, holds her guitar case close to herself and doesn’t bother with the poker face this time.

 

“You have to ask?”

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

The first time they’re on-stage, some little place not much bigger than a garage, is a success.

 

She gets jittery for the first time in years, in the time between practice that afternoon and the show later that night. If it’s a con, you plan. You plan and you plan and you plan until nothing can go wrong, and then you plan for if something does go wrong, too.

 

But on stage, there’s only so far planning will take you. Either the audience loves you, or they don’t.

 

Their first song is a hit, the words coming easy even though they’re not hers—never have been. But by the second song Debbie closes her eyes, sways and plays and sings and _means it_ until her fingertips ache and her throat hurts and in the small, warm space her long hair sticks to the nape of her neck, and it’s only when she turns around at one point, eyes flicking to Lou who’s _got_ her this whole time—on beat, head bobbing, blonde fringe in her eyes, white bass slung low against her hips like she’s making love to it—that it hits her.

 

That’s why this is different, why it doesn’t evoke the same standard, dare she say _bland_ , performance she felt she’d always given with Danny and his band.

 

There are the lyrics about something other than fast cars and fucking girls—subject _man_ , verb _fuck_ , object _girl_ —like always, the drummer she knows is focusing on playing and not catching glances at her ass in her tight black dress, even the audience too who rocks out with them with a different energy and movement, but most of all Lou, who looks up, who catches her eye and then smiles at her, caught up in all of it as well, the crowd cheering and the lights and the knowledge that it went pretty fucking great, and Debbie pivots, turns back to the crowd and smiles.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

She calls up Rusty, who manages to find or make a slot in the timetable of some place in Chicago, and they head out and play and now they’re all a little buzzed but it’s nice outside despite the late hour and so they walk back to their hotel they’ve splurged on, pay their tab and leave and amble past bars and restaurants alongside some nice part of the Chicago River, gig over hours ago.

 

Nine Ball is pulling at a vape pen that’s got something other than tobacco in it and Constance is chattering to her about something, hands moving through the air, something with cards and marks that makes Debbie take notice, except that she stumbles a bit on the uneven edge of the curb they’ve just stepped over. But before she can do anything more than stumble, a hand held out to help catch her balance on anything nearby, there’s Lou’s hand at her elbow, holding her steady.

 

“How,” Lou asks with a hint of amusement once it’s evident that Debbie’s okay, the two of them at a stop as Debbie catches her balance, “do you manage not to break your ankles in those?”

 

Debbie doesn’t even have to look down, knows Lou’s asking about her heels because they are her favorite kind—thin and black and strappy, the kind she prides herself on spending the entire night in and not walking out of a club or a show barefoot when a lesser woman would have done so hours ago. Lou, conversely, is in black leather pants, tight enough to have had Debbie’s hands itching to reach out and touch since she saw Lou show up in them at practice earlier, some velvet vest under a black and silver bomber jacket, boots thick-heeled and a deep purple color.

 

She wants, Debbie realizes. She’s wanted, in some way or another, since the first practice when she had shook Lou’s hand, when Lou had stood up and made her way over and introduced herself, has wanted even more as they’ve all gotten to know each other and as Lou had stood out calm and flirtatious, as she’s realized that the only ones in the audience or backstage or on the street that turn Lou’s head are women.

 

The drinks and the show and the night air have her skin thrumming and her body moving warm and easy and _wanting_ , and she reaches up and tucks a strand of hair back behind her ear because that always works, smiles at Lou and slides her arm from Lou’s grip like she’s letting go but lets her hand linger in Lou’s though, curls her fingers around Lou’s.

 

“Practice,” she says, or something like it, and it must be delivered witty and charming enough because it gets a chuckle out of Lou, low and short.

 

Nine Ball and Constance, who’ve stopped ahead of them start, start walking once everyone sees she’s okay, leaving them a good few paces behind them, and when she starts walking and lets go, Lou’s hand falling away, Debbie can’t help but preen a little at the thought of people seeing them when she feels Lou’s hand settle on the small of her back instead, Lou glancing at her under her fringe and smiling.

 

“Can’t have you breaking your ankle before our next gig,” Lou says, and Debbie agrees, sashays a little closer as they walk until she’s warm against Lou’s side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t mix business and pleasure, their father had taught them both, and Danny had stuck with it and kept his personal and private life separate, his guitar something he’d given up around twenty-something when bigger payouts and a wife had put an end to practice.

 

But that’s why she never got the same rush from walking onstage with Danny and his friends, Debbie knows, why she always hated the default position she always found herself in of micro-managing without the respect or even the pay, never looked forward to practice as anything other than something to get through and a gig as something to put a few hundred bucks in her pocket.

 

It’s their tradition, Debbie learns early on, invited after the first practice, to stay after and eat and drink in Lou’s apartment, instruments out and nothing cleaned up yet, the only thing important now a bottle of something and some pad thai.

 

But now Nine Ball is gone and Constance is out like a light on the couch and that leaves her and Lou and that unnamed thing between them at the table, Lou watching her with smoky eyes and a bottle of Jack in her hands.

 

She can wait, for a con. She’s used to it. It’s three parts planning and one part timing, and Debbie takes another shot, feels the warmth settle in her stomach as she sets the bottle and the shot glass back down on the table. But this is not a con and they’ve run through another amazing practice, something else big no doubt on the horizon, and Lou is asking her how she learned to play and about Danny and her favorite song and Debbie's asking questions back and before she knows it it’s almost three in the morning.

 

She goes for it, reaches up and kisses Lou before she leaves, walks down to the street, and catches an Uber home, headphones in the entire way to avoid talking to anyone and nursing another kind of warmth.

 

(She wonders if Nine Ball or Constance knows that much about Lou, about the day she picked up her first bass and knew it was what she wanted to do with the rest of her life or how when she moved ‘to the states’ when she was ten and everything that entailed or the disastrous but in retrospect amusing story about the first girl she kissed.)

 

She falls into bed onto her stomach and draws the covers over herself with one hand, closes her eyes.

 

(“It was in a bar when I was seventeen,” Debbie admits, hopes Lou won’t judge her too harshly for that and almost laughs because if Lou is anything it is not judgmental. The other girl had been part of a con, some small thing they’d been running to see how well they worked together. “But then I realized I really liked it.”)

 

She lets her hands slip under her body and cup her breasts over the fabric of her slip, sighs and kneads.

 

(She’d wanted to kiss her and more, had let the fantasy of pressing Lou up against her wall or Lou laying her down on the raised stage flit through her thoughts, but Constance is on the couch and they’re both a little tipsy and none of that is how she wants it to play out, so she kisses Lou and leaves with a little smile over her shoulder.)

 

Her fingers slip under the band of her underwear, make her shiver, shoulder braced against the sheets and back arching, and when she comes she lets Lou’s name linger on her tongue.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Are we there yet?” Constance asks again from the seats behind them, leaning forward to snap a photo of yet another stretch of empty highway— _for the documentary I’m going to make_ , Constance says, which is news to Debbie and she raises a hand, shields herself from Constance’s ever-present iPhone—and Nine Ball driving beside her only snorts in response.

 

“Not even close.”

 

It’s pitch-dark by the time they pull off the highway, follow a sign they saw from the road and end up at some little motel, and exhausted take to their room without Nine Ball wanting to explore or Constance wanting drink or herself even wanting to case the joint.

 

Lou disappears into the restroom and Nine Ball collapses on the bed and Constance is on the couch, legs crossed under herself and tv remote in hand, flicking through channels, and so Debbie grabs her bag, rummages through it until she’s found her sweatpants and a t-shirt because if she’s learned one thing it’s that on the road even she can’t be assed to put on something nicer, not unless she’s guaranteed to get her own room at least and they’re nowhere at that pay scale yet.

                                                                                                                                      

Lou appears and says something about going out and slips out the front door, in dark jeans and a leather jacket and body tight like she’s looking for something she won’t find in the room, and so Debbie heads to the bathroom, takes her things and changes into her makeshift pajamas and settles into bed, notebook in hand and Nine Ball next to her already out and snoring softly.

 

It’s quiet and semi-dark and no one’s moving, Constance scrolling on her phone and tucked up on the couch, half-asleep, and so Debbie fishes out the ballpoint pen out from where she’s stuck it in the spiral of the notebook, opens it and settles back against the headboard and arches her knees up to give herself something to put the notebook against, starts writing.

 

It all goes down on paper—every thought, every dream, every emotion. The faster she writes, the poorer her handwriting gets, but she glances at it and it’s okay enough to read and so she writes down more, until the words start cramming up against the edges of the page and she flips to a new one and starts over, and something in her feels lighter.

 

She stops, bleary-eyed, only when Lou finally comes back and gets ready to sleep on the floor. Debbie puts down her notebook on her bedside table and motions toward the bed, says, “Lou, get up. You’re not going to sleep on the floor.”

 

Whether it’s the miles they’ve put in or the darkness of the room once Lou turns out the beside light or the cathartic writing session, she sleeps deep and dreamless on Lou’s shoulder, arms around Lou’s waist and Lou’s arm around her.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

When she kisses Lou onstage—when she thinks of Lou’s hand on her back and kissing Lou against her door and sleeping on Lou’s shoulder and Lou on top of her, moving—for all of Lou’s swagger the kiss seems to catch her completely by surprise, and Debbie smiles and laughs as she tugs on the lapels of Lou’s jacket, almost breaks the kiss because she’s swaying toward her and _happy_ , except Lou seems to finally realize what’s going on and kisses her back, Lou’s hands catching in her hair and bass crashing into her guitar.

 

“Get it, girl,” she hears Nine Ball holler, and Constance is no doubt taking their picture because with the lights and the crowd and the instruments it’ll make a good one for their Instagram, but Debbie doesn’t care about that, doesn’t care about anything except the butterflies in her stomach and pulling Lou closer.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

It’s after a long drive home—after an exhausted, slapdash lunch of Bengali food from around the corner, after hauling instruments and amps and cables up to Lou’s apartment, after saying goodbye and agreeing on another practice session on Tuesday, giving them all a break, after everyone finally goes home and the door’s locked and silence, such a strange thing, falls over Lou’s apartment—that in Lou’s big queen bed does Debbie have the time and the privacy, if not all the energy she’d like ideally, to show Lou what she can’t onstage.

 

She teases apart the buttons of Lou’s silky shirt, Lou on her back and herself straddling her waist, lets Lou’s hands slip up her thighs and bracket her hips as she leans forward, lets herself press up against the length of Lou and undoes another button and they kiss, slow and deep and open, Debbie aching for the taste of her.

 

There was the night in Houston and that’s it, quick and hurried but not short on emotion, though still with an ear to the door wondering when Constance and Nine Ball’s drinks and patience would run out and they’d return, and so now with nothing except Lou and her bed and the distant sound of a record playing far away downstairs Debbie slips the shirt off of her and then Lou raises up just a bit, head back against the mattress, and Debbie slips her hands behind her back, unhooks her bra and lets it fall away and holds Lou to her in her arms, Lou's back arched, and kisses just above her stomach, Lou’s arms above her head and splayed back against the bed, fingers curled lightly.

 

It’s not her first time, not her first time with another woman, far from it, but somehow it feels like it because whatever she does Lou _moves_ under her, up to meet her with low moans like no one's ever touched her this softly before, and Debbie's wanted to do this since Houston, really, had let her thoughts drift on the ride home, shoulders tense and breath studiedly even despite the thumping of her heart as they’d rotated through driving duty and she’d let her fingers brush against Lou’s as they'd sat in the back seat together, a tell just sly enough for Constance and Nine Ball not to notice.

 

She undoes Lou’s belt and her zipper and then they tug together because Lou’s jeans are tight and they laugh at that together too, until the material is a rumpled pool on the dark hardwood floor and Debbie’s got her fingers over the thick white band of Lou’s Calvin Kleins and is tugging that too down long lanky legs, mouth following and leaving open-mouthed kisses.

 

She slips back up and there’s a little tattoo where Lou's thigh meets her hip, a switchblade she’ll ask Lou later about and that Debbie presses a kiss to, and then she finally, finally makes her way down Lou’s body to a brand-new soundtrack she’s never heard before, Lou’s soft gasps and hitched breathing, Lou open under her, for her—a slow crescendo you can’t rush through, Debbie knows, because a good crescendo’s always worth the wait, because a crescendo is _nothing_ without the wait, because it’s one she wouldn’t want to rush, not ever, not when everything else has finally fallen away and she finds Lou wet for her and pleading her name and clutching the bottom of headboard before Debbie's even touched her where she needs it most.

 

When Lou comes it’s in a flood against her tongue that’s better than anything Debbie’s daydreamed about, and she holds Lou to her, laps soft and gentle enough to bring Lou there again with a jerk of her hips and a sob, surprised and breathless, and just indulgent enough not to spill a single drop of it.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

She goes to a specialty music store and buys, actually _buys_ , staff lined paper.

 

She works on that in private, in the tub full of suds or when Lou’s asleep beside her or even slips out after practice, finds a little coffee shop to work at in private with her notebook and her pen and her laptop laid out in front of her and her earbuds in because what else are coffee shops for.

 

(She’d shown the lyrics to Lou, worked on the rest herself, and Lou had assured her, “Nine Ball will love it.”)

 

“I have an idea,” Debbie says, presents each one of them at practice a week later with copies of the staff lined sheet—a line for each instrument, and the lyrics on top—that she’s filled out. “If you’ll help me fill in the rest,” she asks, watches Lou give her sheet a glance and a satisfactory nod. “I’ve got my part down and most of the notes for the bass line for this song, if Lou likes them. But I don’t have a damn clue about writing drum notes.”

 

“Or piano,” Constance adds with a grin, because her and Nine Ball's staffs are completely blank.

 

“She gave you the lyrics and the rest,” Nine Ball says, reaches out and swats at Constance with her sheet she’s rolled up. “Now we gotta do our part. And don’ put this shit straight on Instagram, girl,” she adds, getting up and reaching and grabbing her drumsticks from where she’s stuck them in her wrapped-up dreds. “We gotta save _some_ stuff for gigs.”

 

“No promises,” Constance says immediately, holding up two crossed fingers, and Debbie turns, finds Lou settling on the couch with her bass in her lap.

 

There are many things to do, each little step building up to that big thing on the horizon getting bigger and brighter every day, like follow up on the rest of their gigs and practice their old songs and let Constance keep documenting it all, gathering fans one day at a time, and then they’ve got new stuff to learn, new movements to figure out together and music to compose together because it’s not just her songs and thoughts and feelings, Debbie understands, but all of theirs.

 

She picks up her guitar and sits down next to Lou—who leans close and presses a sloppy kiss to the side of her head and says, "What’d I tell you, Debs," as Constance draws out an "Aw!" and then gets out her phone—and gladly gets to work.

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
